


The Boxcar Children Had It Easier

by bonerthatiusedtoknow



Series: Headcanons, plotbunnies, and flurries of inspiration [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Headcanon, M/M, Plotbunnies, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:49:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonerthatiusedtoknow/pseuds/bonerthatiusedtoknow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they were kids, they played a game like this; it's not so fun anymore. Set early on in season two. This works as a mini character study, a headcanon piece, or a plotbunny for a future fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boxcar Children Had It Easier

**Author's Note:**

> Typed on my phone, my apologies for errors!

When they were kids, Sam couldn't have been any older than four or five, they would play this game. Using whatever poor excuse for blankets the motels provided, they'd construct these really pathetic looking forts—for the effect rather than any lack of skill because Dean could build a remarkably sturdy shelter from the age of eight—and pretend they were orphans on the run from the law, or escaped convicts hiding out in the woods, or brothers running off with the circus. Always brothers, always on the run, always alone. And Sam had liked it that way, preferred it even, to the point where dad coming home sometimes felt like an unwelcome intrusion into this life Dean had dreamed up for them.

Years later it struck him that these games had been Dean's way of keeping Sam's questions at bay, of keeping him entertained and ignorant and maybe latching onto a little of that peace for himself in the process. The epiphany hadn't changed anything, hadn't diminished the fact that they were some of Sam's fondest memories—that during some of the worst nights at Stanford he'd put himself back into one of those memories with threadbare pillows to cushion the carpet-over-concrete floors, and moth-eaten sheets to serve as their shelter, and pretend he was four years old again waiting for Dean to return with his "kill."

Not once had it occurred to him that one day he would actually be living it. Only, it's not fun anymore, he doesn't get a little thrill from having the FBI on their trail, of it being him and his big brother against the world--no mom, no dad, no home—of being the estranged siblings living on a prayer. 

It's an aching kind of lonely entirely dissimilar from the one he experienced at Stanford, somehow worse and better at the same time. He can't fantasize about apologetic phone calls, patched up relationships a decade overdue, and graduation photos featuring identical, proud grins. He can't soak in the warm comfort of acceptance and love in a tangle of strawberry scented, blonde curls. He can't bury his sorrow in a mountain of textbooks and papers and look to a future cased in normalcy, outside of the realm of nightmares and death.

But he has Dean this time, living and breathing and scowling in the seat next to him, and that's better. Not perfect, not okay, but better. Because Sam can't forget how he almost didn't have Dean. How he'd come so close to losing the woman he would have married, his future, and his home, without a brother to show for it. And in the end, if that costed him a father instead, so be it.

Only, Dean can't see it that way. Can't see how the throbbing wound in Sam's chest could be cauterized by his existence in the world. Sam sees it in his face, black with the knowledge that he's alive while their father isn't, the implications that that fact leaves to saturate the air they breathe. He's spiraling out of control, directionless and unconcerned for his own wellbeing; falling apart, not bothering to pick up the pieces as he goes, and nothing Sam says seems to make a dent. It has to, though, there's no other option; something has to get through to Dean or pretty soon there won't be a Dean to get through to. Sam needs to step up, be the protector now, be the big brother while everything's coming down around them—but he doesn't know how to yet, never learned that skill living so long in the safety of Dean's wing. And that's worse. 

And so they're orphans on the run from the law, stumbling along trying to save the world, no money, no home, no parents, no friends. Just each other, one broken-breaking-and the other doomed to watch it happen.


End file.
